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10 things you never knew about The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar were a sort of medieval SAS – crusading knights who lived like monks and fought in some of the most deadly battles in the Middle Ages. They also inspired Star Wars and Game Of Thrones. Here's all you need to know...

The Knights Templar are famous today for their cameos in The Da Vinci Code and Assassin’s Creed, but in real life they were an army of crusading knights who fought in some of the Middle Age's most bloody battles. Historian Dan Jones, author of a new book about the Templars explains why the truth is even more amazing than the fantasy…

1) The Templars were the original roadside rescue service

The Order Of The Poor Knights Of The Temple Of Solomon (aka The Templars) were founded in Jerusalem in 1119 to protect pilgrims travelling around Christian sites of worship in the years after the armies of the first crusade had seized the holy land from Muslim rule. Think of them as the RAC in chainmail and you’re halfway there. Over the next two centuries they developed into an elite paramilitary organisation with a sideline in banking and financial services: the Navy Seals crossed with Morgan Stanley, if you like.

2) Templar dress-code was pretty basic

The Rule Of The Templars laid out how brothers of the order had to live. In summary? No sex, no personal possessions, no fun – but a lot of praying, fasting, making money and fighting infidels. The Rule was particularly obsessed with fashion. Templar uniforms were black or white robes with a red cross on the chest. Brothers had to be neatly groomed (hair and beard regularly trimmed); they were not allowed to wear gloves or pointed/lace-up shoes since (it claimed) “these abominable things belong to pagans”.

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3) Templar discipline was harsh

Templars knights were legendarily tough soldiers, known for their iron discipline. This was enforced with a system of harsh punishments. Minor infractions were punished with floggings. More serious misdemeanors, such as fighting or disobeying orders could result in a brother being forced to eat his meals on the floor with the dogs for up to a year.

4) The Templar's downfall was unlucky… for everyone

By the early 14th century the crusades were failing and the Templars were going out of fashion. A French king, Philip IV, decided to destroy them and the first round-ups of The Templars started in France on Friday 13 October 1307. There are lots of reasons people think Friday 13 is an unlucky date, one of them being the fact that one of the ugliest political persecutions in history began on just such a day more than seven centuries ago.

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5) The Templars suffered with “fake news”

When Philip attacked the order his ministers produced a sexed-up dossier of allegations, accusing Templar brothers of spitting on images of Christ, having secret homoerotic induction ceremonies and worshiping statues. It was all phoney, but the #CrookedTemplars idea took root and by 1312 the Pope had ordered the Templars to be wound up. The order’s leading members, including the last master, Jacques de Molay, were burned to death in 1314.

6) The Templars were legends in their own lifetimes

Popular fascination with The Templars goes back to well before the age of cinema and video games. It began around 1200AD when a German poet called Wolfram von Eschenbach was writing his version of the King Arthur stories, and decided to include some knights called The Templeisen in his story, as guardians of a mysterious object called The Grail.

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7) …which didn’t really exist

The Holy Grail was a metaphor for Jerusalem, cooked up by medieval romance writers like Eschenbach, Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron. It was no more real than Spectre in the James Bond films.

8) The Templars inspired Star Wars…

The original Star Wars films were strongly influenced by George Lucas’s interest in the Middle Ages. Apparently, early scripts referred to the Jedi Templars, rather than the Jedi Knights.

9) …and Game Of Thrones

And what about the Night's Watch who guard The Wall in the world’s biggest TV show? George RR Martin borrowed heavily from medieval history in creating the world of Westeros. In the Night's Watch, he depicted an order of all-male warriors in eye-catching uniforms, sworn to chastity and devoted to a life defending the kingdom from a menace on its borders. That’s the Templars all over.

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10) Today the Templars are drug barons

Plenty of people have tried to revive or reinvent the Templar movement, from Christian charities and the freemasons, to far-right, Islamophobic hate groups in eastern Europe. For six years the Mexican government has been fighting a drug cartel called Los Cabelleros Templarios (The Knights Templar) who model themselves on the medieval Templars, with their own code of conduct that governs how members should behave and a bracingly medieval approach to discipline and punishment.